If there had been space, the title of today’s blog should have been:  ATTENTION ALL HISTORY BUFFS — ESPECIALLY LOVERS OF COMMUNITY HISTORY AND OF AUTHOR LOUISE PENNY!!

Inside the Library of Congress — is our history here?

And, although the passage I will quote below is from her latest book, A World of Curiosities, no spoiler alert is necessary if you’ve not yet read your copy.  The quote has much to do with the subject of the book but gives absolutely nothing away.  Nothing about the book that is.  But it, once again, tells so much about the author.

Reine-Marie sighed. “It’s our fault. Historians, archivists, researchers, professors, biographers.  We look to the so-called importan figures.  We value papers left behind by Premiers, Prime Ministers, Presidents — by the most prominent witnesses to history — and forget there are other witnesses.  The people who actually lived it.  The First Nations.  The farmers.  The cooks and cleaners and salespeople.  The laborers.  The immigrants, the minorities.”

Medora Espy’s Diary, August 1915 – Or is our history here?

I just want to jump up and down and shout and cajole (as I have done so numerous times in these blogs!) — Keep a journal, folks!  Write in a daybook or a diary or note events on a calendar!  Tell what something looks like, why you love dit or hate it or what the neighbors are saying about it.  Those are the descriptions of the now.  Of December 2022.  Probably not worth noting or even remembering in the now.  But in December 2122 or even 3022 it will be “history” — the real deal!!